A 2016 Pushcart Prize Nominee, Sophia Naz is an in-between, an inhabitant of hyphen. A South Asian-American poet and writer, with deep familial roots in Allahabad and Bhopal. She is obsessed with dismantling the concept of “otherness” into one big yarn. Consequently her writing dwells in the liminal, engaging with borders that are linguistic, cultural, religious, temporal, personal, geographical and metaphysical. She crossed quite a few onerous borders before moving to New York in 1989 where she met her husband Raam Pandeya, a former journalist, poet, and master of an ancient healing known as Kayakalpa, which she has imbibed and practiced for the last two and a half decades. During her time in Manhattan she also garnered critical acclaim for her acting as a deranged immigrant housewife in Bina Sharif’s Watchman at the Theater For The New City, before moving to California where she currently resides with her husband and son. Her poetry has been published in the print anthologies, Cactus Heart, Askew Poetry, Bank Heavy Press and Spilled Ink as well in a number of online journals including Poetry International, The Adirondack Review, The Daily O, Lantern Journal, Convergence Journal, AAJ, Zabaan, AntiSerious and Full Of Crow. Peripheries, is her debut collection of poems, available from Amazon ( at the link below) as well as select booksellers. Latest releases are Pointillism ( Copper Coin India) and Date Palms ( City Press , Karachi)

"Sophia Naz is a lover of language, of the sound in the mouth, of the tenderness yet sharpness of wit, and of the metamorphic nature of words. Her poems are a joy to read for sheer vocal and intellectual pleasure. But she can move fiercely and jaggedly when addressing the savagery of national and gender politics. "You are made of cotton and pause. Day is made of full stops. Nights are off the record" she says in her prose poem 'Pecking Order', It is in the end poetry that offers the redress: "the Promethean eyes of the poem are witness / emblem of both fire and water / a force you cannot murder" as she sings in 'Flood'. Pointillismis a remarkable passionate book that must be read."

"I conceive of my poetry as an aerial root, carrying with it the depth and historicity that rootedness brings while being antenna-like in its awareness of the now, the ebb and flow of our inner and outer ecologies. Working with all of these elements to shape a distinct voice is my core alchemical process. I work from disparate sources constantly refining, choosing, juxtaposing and bending the raw metal of language to yield a nugget of surprise from the familiar."

BREAKING NEWS! I will be reading at the 4th Annual Matwaala South Asian Diaspora Poetry Festival April 3 to 7 in New York!Details: bit.ly/Matwaala